A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
by Mark Twain
First published 1889 · English · 534 pages
- Novels
- Adventure
- Science fiction
- Fantasy
Hank Morgan, a practical factory foreman from nineteenth-century Connecticut, is knocked unconscious and wakes up in sixth-century England at the court of King Arthur. Using his knowledge of machines, science and showmanship, he sets out to modernise the kingdom and win influence over the knights and the Church.
Twain uses the time-travel premise to poke fun at romantic ideas of chivalry and to criticise inequality, superstition and abuse of power. It is an early and influential work of comic science fiction, funny at first and increasingly serious in tone.
Quotes
That is the way we are made: we don't reason, where we feel; we just feel.
You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.
Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.